Losing a Friend
by carailayasov
Summary: Its been 12 hours since Steve reached out and tried to save Bucky. The images still flash in his mind. He burns with guilt. He didn't lose a soldier. He lost a friend. Kelsey(OC) comes to him because she is just as lost. Everyone tries to comfort her, but they only alienate her even more. How do you recover when you've lost someone that means so much to you?


Kelsey stepped gingerly through the rubble. All around her was destruction. She swallowed hard and forced herself to focus on her path, to ignore the screams, the bodies, the stench of blood. These were the coordinates Stark had given her. She silently hoped that he wouldn't be here. She wanted to pretend that the last 12 hours had all been a horrible dream. Seeing him would only solidify that she had lost someone…that they both had. But deeply she needed to see him. He was the only one that could understand.

Kelsey tried to follow what was left of a hallway, crawling over large pieces of the walls that had toppled. She moved as slowly as she could, taking deliberate steps. No one had liked the idea of her coming here. For him, it was different. He was a soldier, a fighter. For her, they only saw it as dangerous. She was a doctor, a healer. Too bad she couldn't seem to heal herself, but she had to try to mend him. Maybe, if she could help him, it would numb her own pain for a while. She wouldn't feel empty and lost. Maybe.

Finally, she came to the back room. She wondered silently if it was still a room, considering two of the walls were gone and half the ceiling crumbled.

He was sitting at a small table. In his hand, a glass with a dark liquid. On the table, two bottles empty and a third half gone. He was staring intently at the bottles with resentment. They had let him down. They hadn't helped… or hurt like he wanted. They had done nothing. He'd hoped he would find something at the bottom of the bottle. Isn't that what they always said?

Kelsey stepped as quietly as she could. It was when her foot crushed an already broken glass that he looked up. She could see his eyes were red and distant. He didn't look at her. He looked through her. That only made her hurt more. She couldn't lose him, too.

A chair had toppled next to the table. Kelsey righted it slowly and placed it across from him. She had thought the whole way here of what she would say, but nothing seemed right. She didn't know if words would ever seem right. She was usually talkative. More often than not, the words found her. They escaped her now. So, she sat.

Steve took another long drink of the liquid wincing at the way it move down his throat: smooth, no effect. "Doctor Erskine said that...the serum wouldn't just affect my muscles. It would affect my cells." His voice was broken, barely above a whisper. "Create a protective system…of regeneration and healing. Which means…I can't get drunk." He whispered the last words through clenched teeth, throwing the half full bottle against the wall.

Kelsey flinched at the sound of the bottle shattering and the liquid sliding to the floor. She looked at him as his shoulders drooped, and he leaned against the table. His face faltered, as it fell into his hands. "Steve…" She considered reaching out to touch him, but decided against it. Ever since Bucky had fallen, everyone had felt the need to touch her, hug her, comfort her. None of it helped. The touch just felt cold and distant. Alienating. Only making her more aware of how numb she was.

"This is all my fault," his voice cracked. Steve raised his eyes to meet hers. If he had let her husband die, the least he could do was look her in the eyes. He expected to find them full of resentment and anger. He expected them to be unforgivingly resolute. What he found was that her eyes were distraught, lost, and full of pain. Her pain was not her own though. Her eyes were full of pain for what she had lost and pain for her friend who was before her now. She didn't blame him. She knew he had done everything possible to try to save Bucky. She was worried that she would lose Steve, too, if he let the thought that he could have done more consume him.

"It wasn't your fault. You did everything you could," the words were stifled by the lump that had formed in her throat hours ago and refused to leave, but Steve understood. Both because he knew her, and because he had known that was exactly what she was going to say.

"Why are you here, Kelsey? If it was just to tell me that, you wasted a trip," seeing her in front of him hurt. He had let her husband die…her best friend…their best friend. Seeing the pain she was in only intensified his own. The guilt burned deep in him and radiated, filling his whole body with a burning sensation.

"I didn't want to be alone." Kelsey's voice broke, as tears started to fall. Wordlessly, Kelsey wished she could say she had come just to help Steve, but she knew that wasn't the truth. She had come because she was selfish. Everyone had surrounded her immediately when Bucky was confirmed to have fallen. Everyone had rushed to her, whispering words of comfort and condolences. None of them had known him. To them, he was the charismatic soldier who was quick with a joke and would never turn down a good time. That wasn't him. So, all of their words had seemed shallow and insincere. Kelsey had come because if anyone knew Bucky like she did, it was Steve. Everyone else mourned a soldier. They mourned a friend.

"If I had just…"

"What, Steve? If you had just… known he was going to fall of a train to his death…" Her own words cut through her. That was the first time she had used that word since receiving the news. She had only used words like "gone" or "lost," words with meaning but no finality. Using that word was an ending in its own. Kelsey swallowed hard. She had been going to say something else but the way the word hung in the air made her forget whatever she had meant to say.

Steve felt it, too. The finality. They had both been able to pretend he wasn't dead, just gone, but on the way back. That he had survived the fall. He was just taking the scenic route, making them sweat a little. Steve smiled at the thought. His wishful thinking was quickly replaced with the memory of Bucky reaching out and yelling as he fell.

Kelsey noticed Steve shudder across from her. He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose as the tears started to fall. This time they weren't tears of anger or guilt. It was the first time he cried for the friend he had lost, simply because he had lost him.

They sat in silence. It wasn't comfortable, but it was welcome. There was nothing to be said. Nothing that would help anyway.

Kelsey got lost in her thoughts and pulled out the picture she had folded and unfolded countless times on the train ride here. It was a picture of Bucky in uniform. A journalist following the Howling Commandoes had taken it and given it to her. He was in uniform, but his hat was tilted and his smile crooked.

Bucky was a soldier. He was a well-trained sniper and weapons expert. He had always loved knowing how things worked. It was no surprise that he had gravitated toward Stark or that they had formed a fast friendship.

In the picture, he was in uniform, but the smirk was what betrayed him. That was the reason she loved this picture. Bucky was a soldier but more than that he loved life. He loved new people, new places, new challenges. He was the only Howling Cammando the war hadn't taken a toll on. Physically, he had been injured, but mentally, he was that same guy from Brooklyn. His smirk gave him away because it was the same crooked smile he had always sported. He smiled like all of life was a joke but only he knew the punch line.

Kelsey pulled herself from her thoughts, noticing the sad smile Steve wore. He had seen the picture. Silently, Kelsey slid the picture across the table to him. Steve gingerly picked it up, his hands shaking.

"Do you remember the night when you formed the Captain America super squad?" Kelsey laughed quietly. She had always called it the super squad because it annoyed Bucky. He liked the ring of Howling Cammandoes, but Kelsey thought super squad helped combat his increasingly inflated ego.

Steve smiled at the memory, "Bucky told me that he wasn't following Captain America. He was following the little guy from Brooklyn too dumb to run away from a fight."

"And he never regretted it." Kelsey looked up and met Steve's eyes. "Steve…Bucky made a choice. He chose to follow you. He knew the risks, the costs, but he still chose to follow you. Respect his decision enough to not make his death your fault."

Steve swallowed hard, "I just feel like I failed him… I let him down."

"Bucky was so proud of everything you did. Even if he acted like all of it was half stupid, he was proud of you. Proud that you didn't stop fighting, that you didn't give up, that you didn't quit pushing even when he was telling you to." Kelsey smiled as she remembered something, "I don't think he ever told you. He knew you would try to change his mind… Howard offered him a job at Stark Industries, helping him design, build, and test new weapons for the military. Bucky really wanted to take it. It had been his dream to work with Stark since he had seen him at the New York expo… But he asked for a rain check. He said he couldn't leave you and the Commandoes. Not yet." Kelsey looked down as Steve passed the picture back. She looked at it one last time before folding and placing it back in her pocket. "Steve, Bucky followed you because he was proud of what you all were doing. Don't let his death pull it apart."

Steve raised his eyes to meet hers. He hadn't even thought about stopping even for a second. In fact, he had asked the general for clearance to go to another Hydra base. The general had made him wait. He said that Steve needed to take time to grieve. As far as Steve was concerned, he taken ample time, and he still owed Schmidt. "I'm going after Schmidt. I'm not going to stop 'til all of Hydra is dead, or captured."

Kelsey looked at him. She could already see him planning. She knew that he meant what he had said. He was going to stop Hydra, with or without anyone else. Something tugged at her heart: fear that she would lose him, too. But she couldn't let that stop them. Hydra had killed so many innocent people and was determined to kill even more to bring the world to their knees. What she knew that Hydra didn't was that bringing them to their knees was going to take a whole lot more than a few bombs and a man convinced he was a god. She smiled, "You won't be alone."


End file.
